


The Good, The Bad, and the Pretty

by buttercups3



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, LJ 60 prompts in 60 days, Prompt: Return, Spoilers for Season 2 Comic Con Reel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:11:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/buttercups3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A jaunt into Season 2 based on the Comic Con Reel (so if you are spoiler-free avoid this story). Texas puts up its dukes and Rachel, Miles, and Charlie fight back, and along the way, re-learn the meaning of family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Put on your drawers, and take off your gun.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to the LJ prompt Return for Rachel's homecoming. 
> 
> I think you fans of Westerns will recognize the bastardization of your favorite movie in this title and chapter titles (and Miles's canine pal). I mean that glorious film and Revolution no harm – thus disclaimeth I.

_Rachel_

“Goats,” Miles half-grins with enthusiasm not unlike Danny’s first visit to the county fair. Miles’s eyes crinkle at the corners just like Ben’s.

The goats _are_ cute. Black and white with what resemble soccer knee-highs.

“That one’s pregnant,” Miles jabs an eager finger with a knuckle so calloused it could have been dunked in chalk.

_Thank you, Captain Obvious_ , Rachel internally heckles as proxy for Bass, because Miles and Bass were always planes intersecting – you couldn’t think one without the other. It’s hard to get used to Miles walking and talking on his own: Poky without Gumby. She’s surprised all his parts still function.

A smile emerges at her subconscious association with Miles-parts. Part of her wants to interlace her fingers in his and exuberantly affirm: _Look at us, being normal, living life!_ But the overriding voice in her head reminds: nothing is normal about her and Miles.

What she is, for instance, is: A widow. (That sounds old.) Also a childless mother, having bet humanity on one kid and lost and having forsaken the other, though she’s still not sure _why_ Charlie left yesterday. Perhaps that’s just what twenty year olds do? It’s what Rachel did: traded dusty Texas for the big city on that sea-sized, ice-chapped lake. In an instant, she’d shed her girlish twang for Chicago nasal and never looked back…until now, back in her hometown as if she’d never left, though the world has ended _twice_ since then. (Both times because of her.)

Rachel’s father nods at Miles, “She’ll be ready to birth any day now if you’d like to help.” Ah, the goat. Rachel has traveled light years in a moment.

Miles frowns uncertainly, but Gene has already pushed past him to scratch the coarse hair behind the bulging doe’s ears. The farm looks tranquil enough with the sun setting amber across the corn, but Gene’s warned them that ever since the ICBMs dropped, the black-smoke madness of the early post-Blackout days has edged back in. It collected first in the corners where the bad, unruly folk lurked, but now it has infected even the upright. They have continued to wear masks of civility, but behind closed doors, they are raping their wives, butchering their family pets. Gene is a doctor – he makes house calls. He sees people with their pants down and their legs spread, knives in each other’s backs.

Rachel noticed a pall cast over Miles when Gene explained this news to them, warning them to stay put on the farm and venture out only when necessary. Miles had a different Blackout experience than Rachel did, and it’s one she doesn’t understand, hasn’t asked about (is afraid to ask about). Because when most of the living were scampering from shadow to shadow just surviving, Miles felt compelled to personally deliver the Northeast from its nihilism. He’s got a chip on his shoulder heavy enough to sink the world.

Gene wants Rachel safe and has allowed Miles in the house only to protect her. Gene knows about the affair – blames Miles entirely for it, which isn’t fair (but does make it easier for Rachel). To Gene Miles is: The Seducer, the Drunk, the Murderer. He tolerates Miles only for Rachel’s sake, because (probably) he can see her sanity straining against the fragile, eggshell of her skull.

Miles has buggered off after admiring the goats, because he can sense where he's not wanted. Gene has already warned Miles that if he so much as takes one sip of alcohol at the farmhouse, he’ll face unceremonious (even triumphant) eviction. This, along with the fact that Miles cares neither to read or write in a home filled only with books and paper, means he spends most time quiescent in the rocking chair on the front porch. That’s where Rachel finds him now with that dog, always with that dog.

It doesn’t belong to her father, just started hanging around when Miles arrived. It’s some kind of larger-than-average Schnauzer-mutt with mangy fur and a sinister mustache. Dirty and menacing – Rachel’s leery of it. Perhaps it’s Bass’s spirit animal.

Miles eats an apple slice off the edge of his knife, the blade so close to his tongue it makes Rachel peep in anxiety. He smiles. The dog wags its tail and growls.

Rachel edges the second rocker away just enough and plops down.

“You name him yet?”

“Tuco.”

“Hm?”

Miles just shakes his head, perhaps in disappointment.

“Miles…what did Charlie say to you when she left?” Rachel's preoccupation with Charlie is so great, her brain has forced the topic before she's really considered the consequences. From the window last night, Rachel had watched Charlie and Miles exchange emotional words before her depature.

Miles grabs his elbow to splat a mosquito and shrugs. “She’ll find her way. Kids fly the coup eventually.” 

“Thanks for the parenting lesson, Miles.”

They’ve been hinging on near-constant bickering since they left the Tower (paradoxically, since Nora delivered the headline: _Miles is in love with you_ ).

Miles’s black eyes trail out over the embers of dying light on the field. “Well, what did she tell _you_?” One might detect hostility in his tone, too.

If Rachel had forgotten how frustrating it is to pry information out of Miles, she remembers now. She’s not sure why she answers his query: “That she’d find it easier to love me if she could get a little distance.”

Miles’s Adam’s apple ascends the elevator of his neck. His eyes remain locked on the corn.

“Miles, what are we doing here?”

Another swallow and, for an instant, a shift of the eyes. “I, for one, am waiting for you to tell me to leave.”

There it is. The first admission of feelings either of them has spoken since that kiss before she’d set off for the Tower. If she hadn’t stopped it, she felt sure he would have had his pants down and his dick in her before she could have generated the necessary pro and con list.

“And where would I tell you to go, Miles? What are you, my dog?” She eyes Tuco with loathing. It is hard to decide which of them is dirtier.

Rachel can’t have prepared herself for what Miles responds. “I’m whatever you want me to be.”

The man who once built a complex and functional (if barbaric) republic from sheer anarchy, now (apparently) clay for her molding. Rachel has known the sizzle of his lust and the sticky, ice of his betrayal, but this…this is truly discomfiting. 

“I don’t know what you mean by that. And I don’t like it.” She rises and fumbles for the screen door but is seared by his hot, rough hand on her bare forearm, as Tuco sounds a single bark. Miles releases her arm just as swiftly, perhaps realizing it might be perceived as a threat. 

“Don’t,” is all he says, the problem of the charismatic: He is so used to people being interested enough to read him. But she’s weary, and she won’t.

“No. _You_ don’t.”

She won’t look back to see whether it’s storming in his eyes either.

Miles doesn’t come in at all that night.

* * *

_Miles_

Too much time alone with your thoughts is dangerous. Miles has been lucky almost his whole life in this respect, because he always had Bass. Miles’d be thinking of Emma on a particularly dull day in Iraq and _boom_ – Bass would fling a fistful of gravel at Miles’s balls to wrench him out of his funk. Even in Chicago when he didn't have Bass, Miles was smart enough to take up a trade to distract himself. Hell, maybe he should go back to brewing booze here in town. Though Gene would kill him.

After Rachel had blown Miles off, he’d stomped into the corn and lay down in the dirt, Tuco’s filthy muzzle resting on his stomach. Miles hates sleeping inside now. He hates bowed beds and the scratchy wool of blankets. He’d tolerate it if Rachel’d share hers, but Gene would castrate him. So he’s bedding down here with the stars. 

He grins a little at Orion – “Look, Tuco: Orion’s dick!” he thinks rather than says aloud, because that’s what he and Bass always joked about the celestial sword. But Miles finds he can’t prevent his brain from scuttling back over to its favorite torture: Charlie. 

First it’s Charlie lying broken in his arms on those stairs beneath Philadelphia. The way life waded wobbly back into her watery blue eyes – him gasping in panic, saliva collected at the corners of his mouth from shouting. How her corn-silk hair felt like Rachel’s in his fingertips, confusing him with love.

Then worse, there’s their row from last night, where he predictably fucked up everything he’d built with her. Now he simply has to have faith that she will survive. What Miles hasn’t told Rachel is that Charlie’s gone after Bass, enraged as she was at Miles for letting him escape. Again. 

Miles is a crab with its barbed claws tangled in one of those big fishing nets. Does he go after Charlie or stay here with Rachel…and what? He’s as mystified by this as Rachel is.

It’s surprisingly chilly for an August night, and Miles’s skin is clammy under his clothes, making him grateful for the warmth pouring off Tuco. Miles wakes up in the morning dew with one hell of a chest cold. He dries off the swords he loves (and is convinced love him back) and coughs wetly. _Damn._ He hasn’t been sick in years.

 


	2. You Run the Risks; I do the Cutting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are several potential triggers in this chapter. See end notes if this is a possibility for you. (I don’t want to give the story away.)

_Rachel_

Rachel hasn’t slept in three days, and so, understandably, making out what her father is saying takes an immense amount of squinting.

“I’ve got an appointment over at the Turner's. I’ll look for Miles on the way.” Dad’s eyes seem to add: unless he’s collapsed in a pool of his own piss after a drinking binge.

And the thing is, even if Miles _has_ become the town drunk, Rachel would still take him in like the stray Tuco. Her brain is busy calculating the sums of her life, and Miles is one of those sums. She must see him. Now.

“I’m coming with you.” Her fingers are twisted in the grease of her blonde waves. She can’t remember the last time she bathed. Sick, sick – but the oily hair she feels there reminds her of Strausser. The untamed, slimy curls and thick stench of his genitals against her face. A fetor like roadkill.

She sees her father’s mouth forming the objection to her declaration but decides in advance not to listen. Obstinacy lends a reassuring structure to her ambling thoughts.

Rachel doesn’t know or care if Gene’s acquiesced, but she follows him as he gathers up his little tool bag (like one of those cartoon doctors) and heads out the door. He thinks this is just about Miles, but it isn’t. This is about her walking away from the inevitable. For now.

They plod on in silence, because Gene likes to clear his head before taking up a new case, and because Rachel is wading through sand that catches in her lungs and brain. Now Bass is filtering into her space, claustrophobic though she’s outside. His sweaty upper lip mouths that he has Danny. And Danny dies again but not with the self-satisfied smile of the helicopter-slayer. Instead he dies screaming, hemorrhagic blood pouring out of his nose and eyes and out of his side, where she buried her fingers.

They’re a third of the way into the cornfield when Miles swishes up to them with the dog. Miles doesn’t exactly look well, though Rachel’s own pallor might be spilling off onto others. Is that how sickness works? Like a mirror? It’s strange, but she can’t remember. His skin has taken on a gray-white hue, and he hacks phlegm once or twice. Tuco looks untouchably foul as always. She cringes when he sweeps by her leg.

“Where you off to?” Miles asks, as Rachel tries to wade through her sticky subconscious toward surface. It’s hard when there’s no light to guide you. She wonders if the men in her life can tell she’s gone bonkers, and if they’re just tolerating her because they feel responsible for her in their own ways.

“House call” is Gene’s terse response.

“Can I come?” Miles.

“No. You’re sick.” Ah, so her father has noticed too. The mirror theory of disease crumbles.

“I’m not sick – just a little dew on the pipes,” Miles answers or something absurd like that; she's stopped listening. She swims back into her brain and lets them argue it out. She takes off in the general direction of the Turner’s and shortly hears two sets of boots in the corn behind her. Motion is an important part of her identity at the moment, and she's relieved they seem to have understood this. 

Miles is suddenly on her elbow.

“Rachel, I’m…I’m sorry for last night.”

Sorry – why? She can’t recall and feels stupid and empty. She used to remember everything. She glances into the burning brown eyes and detects regret. She could give him what he wants – three simple words – I forgive you. But would it mean she forgives him for eight years ago? For Ben? For Danny? Because excising the Miles from the Bass is something only an expert surgeon could do – not her. She couldn’t even untangle her necklaces when they wound up in her jewelry box. So no, she can’t even imagine what to answer Miles. She lets the moment pass. 

But she has seen the feelings in his eyes. He’s stopped hiding them for some reason. Nora’s death? He lets his fingers rest gently on her shoulder, slide down and fall through her fingertips, lightly grazing her skin. It sends a not-unpleasant chill down her stomach. But now he’s stopped touching, because she hasn’t responded. It’s for the best.

* * *

  _Miles_

This house call creeps Miles out.

“I think she might be menstruating, but she won’t let me look,” Mrs. Turner says and is all Miles needs to hear before he quickly excuses himself to the porch with Tuco. But after about thirty minutes of the younger girl – the one who’s not ill – staring out the front window at Miles with hollow eyes, he feels compelled to go back inside. Rachel’s at the kitchen table drinking tea with the mother, who is sallow and gnarled and also hollow-eyed. Rachel entangles and re-tangles her slender fingers in her hair. It unsettles him.

He pulls up a chair and is offered and declines tea. He stares at the grain of the wood on the table. He lifts a fist to cough into it (because he's really beginning to feel like hell), and notices an almost imperceptible twitch in Mrs. Turner. His fist, her twitch. Miles looks at the woman, he looks at the young girl, and he looks at Gene’s face as the doctor reenters the hearth-room, stethoscope slung around his neck. “She’s not menstruating,” Gene explains bluntly. And suddenly, Miles knows. The man of this house – he is hurting his family.

“Your husband home, Mrs. Turner?” Gene asks on cue.

“He’s in the field,” she drawls. “You can’t see him now.” The miniscule white flowers on her barnyard dress have faded to gray.

Every muscle in Miles’s body tightens. “Well, we’re gonna,” he insists involuntarily. Gene eyes him, but Miles doesn’t bother to discern the meaning behind the look.

Rachel scoots back her chair abruptly. “I’ll see you at home. My best to you,” she drones at Mrs. Turner. Miles’s eyes follow the blonde mane, the lovely stoop of the shoulders she's acquired post-Blackout. Rachel vanishes.

Miles turns back to Gene. “Let’s go find him.”

Gene shakes his head a little but heads out the front door. It doesn’t take long for them to spot a wide-brimmed hat in the field. A man at labor – the ancient ritual of farming. Miles pushes past Gene, drawing his swords as he lopes.

Point against jugular; the other against balls. It feels so natural to Miles. “What kind of coward uses up his family?” he growls at the farmer. 

Mr. Turner tightens then goes slack. He’s been in a fight before. Miles pushes in for the slightest prick of the throat. 

“And who the fuck are you?” the man rasps.

“The law. God. What does it matter? Only two cures for men like you: castration or death. You choose.” The words tumble out like Miles has been transported back to the worst days of the apocalypse, before the Republic stamped out this kind of sin. 

Miles hears a familiar click and swallows. Gene has a gun pointed at his head.

“That’s not how the law works here, Miles. We have a sheriff. Now you get. Go on. Get!” The cold barrel nudges his temple. Gene wouldn’t do it. Rachel would at least object. Leaving Gene to sort out this kind of scumbag – it isn’t safe. But the Colt revolver insists. Miles drops his swords and glares at Gene.

“It’s a mistake, handing this to your sheriff.”

Gene doesn’t seem to realize: this is the kind of man who’ll have his family butchered and buried under the floorboards before you can come back with a warrant.

Gene points the gun toward the road. “You heard what I said.”

Fine. Miles starts walking. _When you gonna learn when something isn’t your problem?_ Bass once asked him. But the bottomless eyes of the young one. The older one who bleeds. The mother with the tattered dress.

Tuco is with Miles now and that’s a comfort.

Now he can make room again for the haunting face of Rachel. Something in it worried him, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.

And then he can. Bass. Seventeen years ago. A graveyard. Rachel is in danger. Miles has never run so fast in his entire life, and by the time he sees corn, his chest is searing so badly, he’s almost sobbing for breath.

“Rachel, Rachel, Rachel!” he manages to scream. He claws his way toward the house through corn that resists him like angry human hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Triggers for suicide and sexual abuse.


	3. If you Miss, Miss Well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I wasn't expecting to write tonight and certainly not to post, but Hithelleth and Valantha inspired me with their encouraging comments. So thanks, you two! This one's fer you. ;)
> 
> Also, I thought I'd just add that my plan is to hop over to Charlie and Bass next chapter to get them going on their arc. Hopefully that pans out.

_Miles_

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to see your best friend – someone closer to you than your own arm – swinging a gun around with the intent to kill himself. Miles tries never to think of the night of that “family dinner,” as Bass called it, but it’s back now in a rush. As if Miles weren’t already choking on his lungs, he actually fears he might vomit, too, as he slides through the threshold of the farmhouse. 

He pauses to listen, to smell for her, but here’s where Tuco is MVP – the dog’s already bounded toward the bathroom on Rachel's scent. A rattle of the reluctant knob convinces Miles this is going to take a shoulder. Searing pain and he’s in, hoping his shoulder isn’t dislocated, but _fuck_ , there is the blonde mane, cascading over the lip of the bathtub. He’s flung himself so forcefully across the room that he bangs his chin on the copper with a thud and bites through his tongue. He peers into the tub and sees tendrils of red unfurling into the water as if from a dropper.

“Rachel no!”

Tuco licks into Miles's ear, penetrating uncomfortably deep, and Miles brushes him irritably away as his eyes continue to unravel the mystery of the water – all in a split second. The next thing that registers are the dark, neat curls of Rachel’s pubic hair, and his stomach lurches violently, because she’s so God-damned beautiful, and it’s crazy how much he worships her.

“Miles, for God’s sakes,” comes her voice at last. She reaches down to steady his arm, because he’s slipping in water and blood. He’s amazed she can still talk with all that blood everywhere. She must nearly be expired.

“Miles, look at me.” A laugh almost blooms in her tone.

Miles drags his eyes up the perfect creamy skin with its familiar constellations of moles, the delicate rosy nipples, and then he meets her electric-blues.

“I’m fine. I’d have preferred it if you’d knocked before breaking in the door, but I’m fine. What is going on?” 

“I thought…I thought you…” Miles is still too breathless to be coherent. “The blood. All the blood.”

“It’s your tongue, dear,” she says in a voice so gentle that, when coupled with that term of endearment, rips out his heart and splats it on a plate. 

Finally, the reality sinks in. Rachel is fine. That horrible metallic waterfall in his mouth is what’s bleeding into the tub. He’s concocted some dramatic endgame, because he’s a fool. 

They hear the front door click, and Tuco dashes off barking.

“That’ll be, Dad. You mind?” She arches one magnificent eyebrow, as Miles mutters and turns his back.

By the time he looks again, she has flung on a midnight blue robe with little halfmoons. He’s so relieved she's alive that he has a brief but wild fantasy about throwing himself at her feet and begging to become her slave. He’d carry a tea tray on his head – he really would.

“Let’s get Dad to look at your tongue.” 

Miles is about to object, when she leans in close to his ear, in a manner much more pleasing than Tuco had, and whispers, “We’ll talk later. I’m glad you came when you did.”

He’s not proud of it, but the warmth of her breath on his earlobe unleashes an enormous torrent of blood straight south to the point where, after he’s chivalrously gestured for her to go first, he has to shove his hand down his pants and adjust the biggest motherfucking boner he’s had since last time he saw Rachel naked. He’s never been angrier at a belt buckle in his whole life, as it digs mercilessly into his dick.

No matter. One look at Gene’s beat-red face and the boner retreats from whence it came.

* * *

_Rachel_

As she glides out into the front room to meet her father, Rachel almost laughs at herself, because her first thought when she saw Miles bite his tongue was: _Fuck. A beautiful instrument like that? I hope it still functions after this._ The things Miles has done with his tongue to her are nobody’s business, but let’s just say talking is the least of his talents.

She doesn’t have a chance to reflect on the significance of what has happened - of her own decision and Miles showing up to confirm it - because her father is now chastising Miles for causing a ruckus at the Turner’s. But he’s a doctor, first and foremost, and it only takes him a moment to realize that there is a situation involving a profusely bleeding tongue.

Gene manhandles Miles into a chair and shoves gauze in his mouth - precipitating a gagging/coughing fit that makes Miles's eyes bulge - then retrieves his sewing kit. That means stitches. Miles flinches at the sight of the needle but takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders to take it like a man. Hah. Rachel hates that stupid phrase, because men are the biggest sissies when it comes to pain. Except for Miles, who is kind of a stoic. So: correction – he takes it like a woman.

She watches with morbid curiosity as her dad threads in and out of the mangled mass, and Miles just squeezes his eyes shut and holds still.

“Ok then, Miles. Here’s some ice. You keep it nice and packed, or your tongue will fill your head and cut off your air passages.” 

Miles shoots Gene a concerned glance, but her dad just shrugs. _Nice._ She fights a mini-smile.

For the next hour, while her father alternates stuffing ice and gauze into Miles’s mouth - Gene looks as though he's having a ball - Rachel scribbles scattered thoughts in her journal and listens to:

Cough, cough. “Ow.” Cough, cough “Ow.”

When her father finally turns in for the night, Rachel also rises from her chair and walks purposefully over to Miles.

She places her hand on his shoulder, as he gazes up at her with some seriously puppy-dog eyes. This is the almost-childlike Miles she once so adored. She lightly kisses the top of his sweaty, brown head, like she would Danny or Charlie. “Thank you, Miles.”

She’s about to depart for her bedroom, when he attempts:

“Rathel,” and then shudders in pain. He motions her back over and points at her journal. She tears out a blank page and hands him her pencil.

She hasn’t seen his handwriting in many years – it too has a grubby, amateurish quality. It’s so familiar it aches.

He writes: _I’m not letting you out of my sight again._

She turns up her chin and closes her eyes. Inconvenient. But maybe she should trust Miles for once. 

_Please._ His eyes implore.

She nods.

All night Miles dozes in a chair by her bed, and lo and behold, she sleeps. When she awakes, she hears the gentle mouth breathing of sick and injured Miles. She cracks open an eye, and he doesn’t look nearly as good as she imagines, poor thing. That ridiculous dog has curled up on her feet, and she finds she doesn’t even mind. She feels saner. Stronger.


	4. See ya soon, idiots.

_Charlie_

This is not about Miles. She’ll be damned if she’d let him have that satisfaction; he already thinks the whole world revolves around him. Sure, on the night she left, Miles told her how he’d pissed away a third (or is it fourth now?) chance at killing Monroe. And sure, he finally confessed – just a little, but enough to sock her in the stomach – about what he did to her mother. It was him who’d been looking for Charlie’s family when Rachel abandoned them and surrendered to the Monroe Militia. Miles’s fault (according to him) that Rachel had fallen into Monroe’s hands. But that’s not why Charlie left.

It’s not even because of Rachel’s magnificent cruelty – her inability to see her own daughter, her betrayal of Nora, who laid the ultimate sacrifice on the altar of love and loyalty. No, this isn’t about Rachel either.

This is about Charlie’s run as lone wolf. The sheep has separated from the pack, and she’s going to find him – to sink her pointed teeth into him. For Danny? For Nora or Maggie or her father (who is perhaps the greatest mystery of all)? Sure, for them. But she’s not afraid to admit that she’s doing this mainly for herself. To see if the painful knot in her throat will ease when Monroe’s putrid blood runs warm to cold over her hands. Later, yes later, she’ll deal with Miles and her mother.

She’s been introducing herself as Charlie Walker since she left, because it amuses her to think of her innocence when she’d first met “Nate Walker.” Conversely, it stings to recall Jason Neville. She’s still not even sure who double-crossed whom that night at the Tower: Jason or Miles. But “Nate” reminds her of a time when the world still seemed like a giant clamshell, begging to be cracked open, all pearly and promising inside.

Charlie’s an excellent tracker, and her bloodhound nostrils and one ill-advised romp with a local – Adam – has led her here: New Vegas. It smells like a three-day-old armpit and is crawling with the most peculiar specimens of people Charlie has ever seen. She tosses her hair and strides forward with more confidence than is probably advisable, especially this late at night, but hell – she’s just had casual sex for the first time in her life, she’s cut ties with everyone she knows, and she’s on a revenge mission. If Miles taught her anything, it’s that a little swagger makes up for a whole lot of stupidity.

Perhaps she should reel it in slightly, though, because an oddly elongated man (oh, he’s on stilts) has just improbably spat a torrent of fire at her, which nearly sets her sleeve ablaze. She stumbles sideways and begins to eye the surrounding tents' garishly painted signs for a clue:

_Got gold? Gamble here!_

_Bearded lady the size of the Reclining Buddha!_

_Whores n’ More_

Oddly, _Whores n’ More_ sounds the least threatening to Charlie (though what the “n’ more” part could possibly mean, she hasn’t a clue). She parts the flaps and a petite Asian woman greets her with a jarring Southern accent.

“Hey, baby. You like men or women?”

Charlie’s mouth falls open. The woman couldn’t be more than four-foot-ten and is adorned in scanty slit-crotch panties joined by garters to black-fishnet stockings. 

“You want something in between? We got that too. But it costs extra.” The woman looks impatient.

“Oh no. I’m looking for someone. A man. Sebastian Monroe,” Charlie stutters. She’s not yet a pro at the Miles’s conceit. He’d surely know how to behave in a whorehut when confronted with a woman’s gaping panties and streaming pubic hair. 

The woman cocks a severe penciled eyebrow, drawing Charlie’s attention back to its proper location. “Mm hm. Have a seat, missy. But not there.” 

Charlie warily eyes the dark stain on the velvet chaise lounge she was about to become friendly with.

“Over there,” the prostitute points to a wicker chair. “Whiskey?”

Oh, what the hell. It’s part of the lifestyle. Charlie accepts the flask and tosses some back, while the woman disappears for a moment. The booze singes the back of Charlie’s throat, and by the time a petite blonde arrives, there are tears in Charlie’s eyes. She supposes the drinking takes some work, too.

* * *

_Bass_

Bass is wildly humping Annabeth from behind, but his heart’s just not in it. He’s got a fight this evening (boxing brings in the gold), and he’s preoccupied with the impending match. He’ll be fighting Jubal Wayne (“Old Jubilee”), and that motherfucker is big. He makes Bass look like a seventh grader whose voice hasn’t dropped. It takes Bass a moment to realize his dick has fallen limply from Anna’s ass. He shoots his malfunctioning equipment a quizzical look and gives up with a shrug.

Annabeth gazes back with a mixture of scorn and amusement. “Well, I hope you fight better than you fuck tonight, Bass, cuz I’d like to get paid. It’s been weeks.”

Bass gives her perky little ass a friendly pat. “Sorry. I _was_ total shit.” He’s not afraid to admit defeat in this new phase of life. He’s trying to make room for all kinds of habits of humanity he’d excised from his presidential days. “Don’t worry. I know what I owe you.” He winks. 

A tinkle of the dwarfed wind chime outside of their tent chamber announces someone’s presence.

“Annabeth!” It’s Selma. An unmistakable accent like Windex on glass.

“You wanna cover up, baby?” Annabeth asks charitably, and Bass tosses his head to let her know he doesn’t give a shit. But he does reach for his pants and start threading legs through holes.

Selma’s dark skin emerges, milk-chocolatey in the candle glow. She’s hot when she doesn’t talk. “Some blonde chick here to see you, Bassy.”

Bass freezes, one leg still hooked in his pants. “How old?” If it’s fucking Rachel, then all of their geese are cooked. That unhinged bitch travels with grenades.

“I dunno. Maybe nineteen or twenty. Very fresh-faced.”

Bass laughs in relief. “No fucking way. Charlie Matheson. Send her away, and don’t tell her I’m here.”

Selma shrugs and leaves, as Bass clicks on his sword belt.

Annabeth has dressed and is about to head out after Selma, when Bass catches her arm. He warns, “Be careful of that one. She looks innocent, but she’s got teeth." 

“I can handle a kid.”

“Annabeth! She’s a caged animal. Don’t be stupid. Leave her to me.”

Bass swings his lady around into his arms like he’s some great, gentlemanly swashbuckler of old. Like he’s not a mass-murdering villain stripped of his kingdom and she’s not some used-up whore. “I need you at my fight for good luck. Don’t be long.”


	5. I like big fat men like you. When they fall they make more noise.

_Bass_

Charlie showing up in New Vegas is better than Rachel, but whatever Matheson the Younger is doing here isn’t good news. Bass doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but the chunk of stale air that has lodged in his windpipe is Miles. Where Charlie goes, Miles goes – or at least that’s how things worked in the past. But Miles let Bass escape in Colorado; it doesn’t make sense that he’d come back to kill Bass now, unless…Miles is back to make amends. Bass's heart does a familiar somersault. Pathetic lovesick dog – he’s got to stop thinking this way. “Borderline erotic,” Neville had called it, and can Bass blame him? You tell me: is it more intimate to have your dick in a whore’s ass for a minute or to spend every living moment from age eight to forty-one sharing air with another human being? Because yeah, maybe it’s revolting, but Bass knows what Miles’s shit smells like, that little "umf" of pleasure when Miles gets himself off, how his nose drips when he cries. All that is as fucking personal as wearing your insides on the outside. And maybe Bass will allow himself to admit this again, though he’d begun to doubt it: their love transcends everything. When has that ever been true of a woman he fucked?

So yeah, part of him wants to skip the fight with Old Jube and start a wild search for his best friend, but there’s a small voice in his head that jeers: _Miles isn’t here. The only thing that makes sense is that Charlie’s come to kill you herself, since her uncle couldn’t get the job done._ Fine, he can handle Charlie. He just doesn’t want one of his ladies getting hurt. They may be whores, but they’re all he’s got these days.

Bass enters the match tent and the crowd duly hoops and hollers. He revels in the attention. Bass slowly peels his shirt away to reveal the curves and valleys of his muscled torso and catches sight of Jubal Wayne grinning. The giant's ebony skin sparkles with sweat – each one of his pecs the size of Bass’s head. Bass has conquered worse. Hell, he once felled entire armies (but then, of course, he had Miles at his side).

Bass takes his place in the ring.

* * *

_Charlie_

The woman with the peep-panties, pours herself some greenish liquid into a crystal goblet, while the petite blonde introduces herself. “I’m Annabeth; this is Selma. You?”

“Charlie Walker.”

Annabeth has miles edged onto her weary face but somehow maintains an underlying grace. She's pretty - she really is. “That’s not what I heard, Charlie Matheson,” she counters. 

Charlie’s stomach lurches. Is her uncle’s name known even in these parts?

Selma pours some of the emeraldy liquor into a tumbler and hands it to Charlie, who tries to politely refuse. She's already wrecked from the whiskey.

“It’s absinthe. Very rare. You’ll like it," comes the screechy voice.

Charlie takes a purse-lipped sip. Scalding and then…licorice. Disgusting. Both women laugh at her.

She coughs out, “Is Sebastian Monroe here or not?” trying to sound tough.

Charlie sees Annabeth’s eyes flit to the crossbow slung behind her back. “He ain’t here. Was once but left. So…Matheson, huh? All that blonde hair, those blue eyes…Do you know a Rachel? From Willoughby?”

Charlie coughs a little harder and shakes her head. “No idea. Common last name,” she rasps, sounding more and more like her uncle. So it’s the drinking that wrecks his voice. She’s beginning to feel loose and loopy. Her guard is crumpling and pooling around her like dirty laundry. 

“Uh-huh.” Annabeth doesn’t seem convinced. “Well, we’ve got a fight to attend. You skedaddle. And get off the streets. It’s not safe here at night. Rangers’ll get ya.”

“Rangers?”

Selma starts in, “Jesus, you _are_ new to Texas, aren’t you. Vigilantes – they think they’re here to stamp out immorality like this.” She waves around the tent. “Really, they’re just bandits like everyone else.” 

The women begin dressing, as Charlie wobbles out duckling-like. She hides around the side of the expansive “Whores n’ More” tent until the ladies emerge. Then she follows them and her instincts to the fight.

* * *

_Bass_

Bass has absorbed a few painful hooks to the neck, before he really finds an in. Jubal Wayne may be huge, but he’s slower, and Bass can come from underneath to wear him down. The crowd’s cheering ebbs and flows, transporting Bass in an out of a point of focus on a single square centimeter of dark flesh. The pugilist at work. Adrenaline, sweat, adoration – Bass is on a high that’s better than sex. Miles always understood that about the perfect fight.

Bass gets Old Jubilee to crumble – the oaf – and then pummels him in the face. After a severe shellacking, the giant goes down with a thunderous thud. Bass smiles. The countdown. Five, four – a weak attempt at getting to his knees and another collapse – three, two, one: Won. Bass raises his fists in triumph and is suddenly hobbled by a shockwave at his side. He knows what this is, because he’s been here before. He’s been shot.

But the incessant piercing tells him it’s not a bullet. His eyes slide down to his pulsing side, and he wrenches out an arrow. He knows he’s in Texas, but what is this? Vengeful Indians? And then he remembers. Charlie Matheson.

Because this _is_ Texas, instead of anyone rushing to help Bass, they all run away from him – streaming out the tent, the traitors. It takes Bass a moment to realize it’s not because he’s been shot, but because of the clopping of hooves outside. The Rangers. Gunshots, yelling, the smell of charred tents. Anarchy unfurled.

At this point, Bass catches Annabeth and Selma’s eyes and signals for them to run – he’ll be fine. He grabs his swords and shirt from the floor and rips off a strip to dim the tide of blood from his side. Once he’s joined in the stampede, he scans for Charlie and almost immediately makes out familiar blonde waves. Of course, she’d make use of the turbulence to hang around and finish the job. Well, that’s not gonna happen, Princess. He darts behind a burning tent and sees a club propped there. Better to use that then the blade. Bass is unwilling to ruin any last chance with Miles by slaying his niece.

He creeps up behind her and shatters her left ankle with one swing. She crumples into his arms, and he flings her over a shoulder.

“You’ll shut up and lie still if you want to live!” he screams, though from the violent wriggling, he can't tell if she's not heard or is just being obstinate.

They flee through darkness and fire, the masks of the Rangers (like the KKK of old) obscuring men into threatening white blobs – here one is raping a child who couldn’t be more than twelve, there is one skewering and gutting an old man with a Bowie knife. Charlie screams at each new horror, but Bass runs on, already knowing the outcome of this brand of bloodshed. At one point in his life, he had agreed with Miles that it had to be stopped. At this point, he knows better. Violence begets violence begets violence. There is no end. You either ignore it or you become part of it.

He’s got to put distance between them and New Vegas, so he runs until he can’t, and then he walks, and if it comes to it, he’ll crawl. At some point along the way, Charlie Matheson has simply become a wounded comrade he’s got to transport to safety, you know, glossing over the part where he was the one who crushed her ankle.

Finally they come upon a barn, and he gently allows Charlie to sink off his aching shoulder into some hay. A pair of black horses glare at them for intruding upon their sanctuary. Charlie moans and Bass drops to his knees to try to set her ankle with a stick.

She kicks at him with the good foot. “Don’t touch me. I’m gonna kill you.”

Bass grins lopsidedly. “You know, Charlotte, I admire your gumption. I really do.”

She spits at him, but nothing comes out. Instead he smells acerbic booze on her breath. He's tickled to learn she was making the best of New Vegas. Hell, he certainly was.

“Where’s Miles, Charlie?”

“Like I would tell you!”

“Oh you’ll tell me, and I’ll take you back there. Texas is hell on earth. You’re not safe on your own. Nobody is. You want to live? You’ll stick with Miles.”

“I can protect myself!”

“Stubborn, like your mother. Did you know that she held out for eight years before she talked? Incredible really. I might admire her more than anyone. Perfectly single-minded. But no, Charlie. You can’t protect yourself. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Noticed what?” Charlie flinches as Bass begins to wrap the ankle.

“The change in the air. Something wrong with time or reality…I can’t explain it. Just is. A crackle here. Static there. Whatever your mom did in the Tower – it wrecked things. And not like before. Things are really haywire now. People are more aggressive, more desperate.” Bass tightens the bandage and ties it. “Is your mother with Miles?”

Charlie fixes Bass with an icy stare. 

Bass shrugs. “Fine. Be like that, Charlotte. But you’re stuck with me. I’ll be Chang to your Eng until you lead me to Miles and Rachel.”

Charlie’s ire-lined face finally softens in natural curiosity. “Who are Chang and Eng?”

Bass grins. He and Charlie are going to get along just fine. “Siamese twins. In the Marines, people were always calling me and Miles that. And let me tell you - I'd rather be your appendage any day. You’re a hell of a lot prettier than Miles.”


	6. Even a filthy beggar has got a protecting angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bad, bad day, so what does the world need? All the Riles fluff!

_Miles_

They say damaged people have good days and bad days – well, Rachel’s got good and bad _hours_.

When Miles first wakes up in the chair beside her bed, before he even registers he’s got arms and legs, he sees her just staring up at the ceiling with icicle eyes – damned if it isn’t chilly as a mid-January Chicago morning in her soul. 

Well, he’s in his own exquisite hell. His tongue feels like it’s been grated along with the parmesan, his throat so achy he spends the better part of a minute trying to determine if swallowing is actually a necessary function...and then he _gulps_. And cringes. His balls itch, too. He can’t remember the last time he bathed, and he smells pretty literally like a pig. He slides his hand surreptitiously down into his lap and scratches extravagantly. Color rises to his cheeks when he realizes that those wintry eyes have latched onto him. He retracts his hand. 

She keeps staring. He licks his lips.

Miles wants to ask Rachel a question, but it seems a stretch to get his tongue to cooperate. He starts easy:

“Ok?” he grunts rawly at her. _Fuck me, that hurt._ He clasps his throat involuntarily with one hand. 

Rachel nods vacantly, rises from sweat-stained sheets, and tries to slip past Miles, but he stands in her path. Rachel’s not a particularly small woman, but today she looks withered and turned in on herself. The juxtaposition with Miles’s own dominating presence makes him almost regret his size. He doesn’t want to startle her.

“Gotta know, Rache.” _Ow._ He straight up emphysema wheezes before croaking, “Were you going to hurt yourself last night?”

He’s so impressed with himself for communicating a full sentence that he hopes she’ll share in the celebration by answering what he’s sure she doesn’t want to answer. She’s not looking up at his face but straight ahead at his chest. He feels another pang of regret – this time for how rank he smells and how close her delicate nostrils are to his armpits. It hits him how badly he wants to dip down to her chin and wet her dry, cracked lips with his own (not that his are much moister).

 _Well shit._ She’s not saying anything. And even Miles fucking Matheson isn’t tough enough to wring another sentence out of his puffy, infected throat. But Miles has made people do things without speaking before. He wills his chest to re-ask the question – or some crap like that.

He’s just about to give up on her when at last she speaks. 

“Yes. I planned to die.” The voice sounds as though it lacks a body. 

Hearing it upsets him, and yet he’s perversely glad he knows her so well. Until this moment, he realizes, he thought he might have misread that lean look in her eyes. I mean, _dammit_. He’s feeling so smug now his mouth twitches. What is _wrong_ with him? This woman fucks with all that is reasonable in him. Is he that desperate to own a piece of her?

She sighs with her whole body. “But…I thought about Charlie and how much I’ve failed her, and then I pictured you having to tell her…I guess I don’t get to get off the hook that easily.” 

She finally peers up at him from under thick, sticky eyelashes. He knows he can’t kiss her. He’s sick as a dog for one thing, and for another, she wouldn’t necessarily welcome it. He already forced that once, and it’s just not right, knowing what she’s been through. But he does reach out to touch her cheek, and she lets her silky skin sort of rest in the cradle of his hand. His chest burns.

He’s really and truly going to the special hell, because _this is still Ben’s wife_. Miles once would have done nearly anything to have her. Now she can be his for the low, low price of one dead brother. If there is an afterlife, Ben is sitting on some cloud moodily plotting his lightning revenge. _Look but don’t touch, asshole._

Miles drops his hand and mutters, “Thanks.” 

Rachel arches a gloriously curved eyebrow at him. “For?” 

“Not leaving,” and then he adds so late, he wouldn’t even have been sure he said it aloud if it weren’t for her little jump: “me.”

Yep, he fucking needs her more than he needs air.

It’s at this moment that Gene’s voice booms around the corner and into Miles’s over-stuffed skull: “The nanny’s birthing! Come quick!”

Miles and Rachel kind of look at each other, their lips curl in acknowledgement of how deadly serious the last few minutes have been, and then they practically push each other out of the way like eight-year-olds trying to make it out the bedroom door at once. Miles is still in his days-old clothes, and Rachel’s in that blue bathrobe. Gene must think they’ve bought a one-way ticket to Crazyville when he sees them, but he doesn’t mention it, just instructs Miles to wash up in that bucket and prepare himself for the “miracle of life” (but Gene says “miracle” like he actually means that goat is about to lay the biggest turd in the Southwest, and I can’t wait to see your expression when it drops.) 

Miles rubs his hand together in the water and then catches sight of a brownish balloon pulsating from the nanny’s hindquarters. She’s making a bleeting sound somewhere in between what Miles imagines is goat-agony and goat-orgasm. Suddenly he feels like paying a second visit to the bucket for something a little more intimate than handwashing.

“Step over here, Miles,” Gene orders, but his voice is softening.

Poor goat. This is Miles’s first experience with birthing, and it looks exceptionally cruel.

The brown thing - "water bag," Gene explains - protrudes until it kind of _falunks_ all the way out to hang by a string. Then something whitish starts emerging from the goat. Miles stumbles and has to grab onto a railing. _Don’t think of vomit._ _Swords, boobies; God, where is Bass when you need him?_

“She’s going to need a little help, Miles; just gently insert a few fingers right there by the kid’s face.”

The goat has dropped to the straw and is writhing. Miles can't blame her at all for that. Gene must be mad thinking she needs more things stuck in her vagina.

 _Guhhh._ Is Miles actually going to swoon? He dutifully slides the fingers in – _squish_ – and then really fast, faster than he ever could have imagined, the kid oozes out into his hand and plops in the straw. It’s so fucking weird. It’s got all these little spindly legs with little _hooves_. It’s…well, it is kind of a miracle.

Miles is so overwhelmed, he looks up at Rachel, forgets his stupid tongue stitches and aching throat, and exclaims passionately, “You did this? _Twice?_ ”

Rachel and Gene exchange a look that is one part hilarity and two parts opprobrium. Rachel says, “No, in fact. Because I’m not a goat.”

“Look out – here comes the other one!” Gene warns. 

Miles barely ducks out of the way before the other kid comes rocketing out of the bleeting - now it just sounds like a goat-sob - nanny.

“Woah,” Miles affirms to the universe.

“Just wait until you see the afterbirth,” Gene agrees.

* * *

_Rachel_

“You don’t have to sleep in that old chair now that you're clean,” Rachel smiles when they’ve found their way back to her room that night.

Miles wasn't kidding when he claimed he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight again. He’s been at her side except for when she’d shooed him away to do her business. Even then she got a little spooked thinking he might be waiting for her on the other side of the outhouse door. (But it turned out that he left a respectful distance.)

They hadn’t bathed together either.

Now here Rachel sits primly upright in bed, adorned only in her tanktop and panties, and Miles looks poised to have at another night’s slumber in that rickety chair. It just doesn’t seem right. He’s sick. His tongue is a mangled mess. And he’s been adorably on cloud nine ever since assisting in bringing goat children into the world. If she keeps him close enough, maybe a little of his joie de vivre will rub off on her. 

Miles looks quizzically at her, his dark eyes sparkling in the moonlight. She realizes that he might have misread her offer. They have, after all, only shared a bed for one reason in the past.

“I don’t mean…I’m not ready for _that_.” She’s suddenly embarrassed.

But Miles doesn’t laugh at her or register disappointment or anything of the sort. He obediently strips down to his boxers as he would on any other night to sleep and lies down flat on the pillow next to her. As she quickly averts her eyes and settles beside the familiar ridges of lean muscle and the ancient and new constellations of scars, he gathers her onto his chest. It feels so good resting against that familiar fur, breathing in his intoxicating aroma, that she almost wants to take back what she’s just said.

Minutes later, he whispers, “We don’t ever have to – if you’re not comfortable with it. Know you’ve been through hell.”

The band of tension that’s been compressing Rachel's forehead for the better part of a decade suddenly releases. _You've been through hell._ Miles is the first to acknowledge this out loud. Tears leak out onto his warm skin. Her nose drips. She drools. It’s disgusting. But Miles just smoothes her hair in long, gentle strokes.

“Miles, I don’t expect you to wait forever,” she manages when she finds her voice. “You’re just…” She can’t really think of how else to word it, it sounds so cliché: “a man.”

Miles snorts – a rich, guttural sound in his chest that makes her smile. “I’m an _old_ man.”

Rachel’s veins are flooded with liquid warmth. She snuggles down into Miles and kisses the skin under her lips, which happens to be the soft, delicate disc of nipple. 

“Oop. Maybe not that old,” Miles chuckles wryly (a little guiltily), and she realizes he’s probably popped a boner. Somehow this only has the effect of making her feel more cared for.


End file.
